Europe and the UnitedStates. Having founded his own popular circulating library in Leadenhall Street in or around 1784, Lane devoted himself to the spread of the library network across England, helping to establish circulating libraries ‘in the chief towns of public resort’, supporting enterprises of all sizes, and successfully ‘induc[ing] many a petty shopkeeper to add even so small a collection as a hundred volumes to his shelves’. 43 Blakey declares Lane's promotion of a nationwide network of libraries ‘the most significant of the various enterprises undertaken